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lol. I've been here. Mostly just observing as there's not too much going on.
I finally let go of my 20 yr old Chargers tailgating chairs this past weekend. The nylon dried out and disintegrated into dust. Lots of memories from the Q.

Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Fouts, perhaps the greatest player in Chargers history, has criticized the team’s move, saying he’ll always be a San Diego Charger, and never a Los Angeles Charger. Fouts has also left his longtime job calling Chargers preseason games, but not because he criticized the team’s move north.

Jay Posner of the San Diego Union-Tribune reports that the Chargers will welcome Fouts back in 2019 if his schedule permits him to return to the booth in the preseason.

The Chargers are going with Spero Dedes and LaDainian Tomlinson as their preseason TV announcers this year, but the team says it would have gladly had Fouts join Dedes and Tomlinson in a three-man booth if Fouts’ schedule had allowed it.

What remains to be seen is whether Fouts wants to return to the Chargers’ booth. He’s made no secret of the fact that he thinks the move to Los Angeles was a mistake, and he has said the Chargers’ failure to sell out the undersized StubHub Center makes the whole league look bad. Fouts may not want to remain associated with the Chargers now that they’re in Los Angeles.

Comment

Hey, when you're winning all those Super Bowls, your team is super-popular and taking over the LA market, and your team's owner is widely admired, respected, even loved....who needs analytics, amirite?

Warren Sharp
✔
@SharpFootball
All of this is frustrating as a fan of efficiency. More frustrating is hearing the Chargers don't even have an analytics dept. No one to study this & advise them of their horribly inefficient decisions. These tweets will fumble in the wind like a tumbleweed. Wake up, Chargers.

10:36 AM - Jul 19, 2018

The thread this tweet is part of is excellent, but this was the tweet that really caught my eye. According to Sharp, the Chargers don’t actually have an analytics department.

Surely not. They’ve got to have a few people crunching the stats, even if it’s an undersized, underutilised group working out of a basement... right?

Well, no. Apparently not. I did some research, and it seems like the Los Angeles Chargers genuinely don’t have a single person looking at analytical data for the team.

Here’s their website, listing all the ‘front office’ staff that work for the team. There’s no job on there even remotely related to analytics, but they do have these jobs listed:

Special Assistant (I know this is LaDainian Tomlinson, but what a terrible job title).
Special Counsel (Oh hi, Mark Fabiani).
Special Advisor (Dean sure likes making people feel special, huh?)
National Crosschecker (Cool name!)
Team Chaplain (Most teams have a Team Chaplain. But most teams also have an analytics department).
Controller (No, seriously, that’s the job.)
Assistant Controller (Well, duh. It’s a bit much to expect someone to be an entire controller without any help).
Guest Services Representative x5 (How nice of the Chargers to hire a personal representative for each fan visiting StubHub).

I could go on, but my point is this: There’s well over 100 jobs listed there. If the Chargers really did have somebody working on the analytics, they’d have included them on the website.

The Baltimore Ravens website, for example, lists not only a ‘Manager, Player Evaluation and Analytics) member of staff, but a ‘Football Systems Developer’ too. The Eagles, who just won the Superbowl, have multiple people working in analytics. The Cleveland Browns - the Browns! - even list Software Developers as part of their Player Personnel staffing group.

What on earth are the Chargers doing?

In this day and age, it is unbelievable that the Chargers choose not to employ a single member of staff to run the analytics. On the contrary, perhaps it is believable, believable that the worst run franchise in the NFL - perhaps in all of sports - could be so unfathomably stupid that they don’t see the need to hire anyone to help them make use of the incredible technology that is at the tip of their fingertips. Even for the Chargers, however, this is absolutely absurd.

When thinking about the most successful team of late, your mind is likely drawn to the New England Patriots, appearing in eight Superbowls - winning five - since the turn of the decade. Those have all come under Bill Belichick’s guidance, widely regarded as possibly the greatest Head Coach in the history of the NFL. Yet Belichick is inextricably linked to Ernie Adams. If you don’t know the name, that’s because Adams notoriously shies away from the limelight. While Belichick was Head Coach of the Cleveland Browns, Art Modell offered $10,000 for anybody who could tell him what it was that he actually paid Ernie Adams to do. Nobody came forward to collect the money.

While he may not be a household name, a huge part of the success Belichick and the Patriots have had could be linked back to Ernie Adams. According to the Boston Globe, Adams “has Belichick’s ear.” That’s putting it lightly. The Globe goes on to say that “Down on the field, the dedicated Ernie Hotline is available for Patriots assistant coaches. Or in case there’s a scramble with Belichick’s headset. The Ernie Hotline is the backup. In case of emergency. Belichick’s lifeline.”

“Adams is the one who tells Belichick whether the Patriots should toss the red challenge flag after a questionable call. At halftime, Adams hustles downstairs with several other coaches and tells Belichick what needs to be done in the second half. The Patriots annually lead the league in effective second-half adjustments.”

So, what is it than Adams actually does? Well, the Globe notes that Adams “studies film, devours statistics, reports on trends, and develops strategies on 2-point conversions, fourth-down attempts, and timeout preservations.”

In a word; analytics.

...

Rot in Hell, Dean.

Comment

Hey, when you're winning all those Super Bowls, your team is super-popular and taking over the LA market, and your team's owner is widely admired, respected, even loved....who needs analytics, amirite?

Comment

I offer you all the 2018 Deadspin “Why Your Team Sucks”, LAC Edition ... apparently the LAC are getting a lot better as its getting a lot harder for him to justify that they suck. Heck, wasn’t too many yrs ago it was downright easy to fill a 500 word column with reasons why they suck.